The Sno-Isle library system plans to ask for a levy increase this November that it says is needed to prevent library branches from cutting hours and losing services.
The library system faces a $2.5 million budget shortfall for next year and is preparing to make sacrifices whether or not voters pass the higher tax in November.
Vacant jobs will go unfilled and old equipment will get used a bit longer, library director Jonalyn Woolf-Ivory said.
“We really took a hard look at coming up with something that would allow us to continue to provide good service but also to tighten our belt,” Woolf-Ivory said.
Sno-Isle serves about 656,000 residents in Snohomish and Island counties. It does not include Everett or Woodway.
The levy increase is to appear on the Nov. 3 ballot. Voters would decide whether to pay 40 cents per $1,000 of a house’s assessed value, up from the current 31 cents. The maximum rate allowed under state law is 50 cents per $1,000.
Public comments convinced the board of trustees not to ask for the maximum, Woolf-Ivory said.
With the higher rate, the owner of a $300,000 home would pay about $120 per year in annual library taxes instead of about $93 now.
“If we do pass the levy, we would pledge to keep the number of hours,” said Jeanne Crisp, Sno-Isle’s technical services director.
Some cost-cutting measures are under way.
Sno-Isle now plans to keep an outdated system for tracking circulation a year longer than expected, Woolf-Ivory said. Replacing it can’t wait beyond 2011 because the vendor is no longer developing the 20-year-old software, making upgrades or repairs difficult, if not impossible.
Sno-Isle also has held off hiring for about three vacant positions and expects that number to grow by year’s end, she said. The budget for buying more books, magazines and electronic databases could shrink, too. The library already has reduced its materials and technology $420,000 this year.
Libraries won’t add new computers, Woolf-Ivory said, “even in libraries where we have considerable lines of people waiting to get onto the Internet.”
The financial worries come at a time when usage is up.
A Mill Creek library branch has lent 11 percent more books and other items so far this year compared with last year. A Clinton branch has lent about 31 percent more.
The increase has been apparent in cyberspace and in person.
Visits to Sno-Isle’s home page were up 23 percent in May compared with the same month a year ago. The library in Brier has seen 17 percent more people walk through its doors this year.
Some signs point to the economy as a factor.
“We’re seeing people coming in needing to use the Internet to apply for jobs,” Woolf-Ivory said. “If they don’t have those resources at home, they’re really lining up at the library to do that.”
Noah Haglund writes for The Herald in Everett.
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